On today's special episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, Matt DesRoches from the Oxidative Potential Podcast and I cover a wide range of topics. We discuss everything from certain aspects of training from lifting to hypertrophy to aerobic development, the role of the nervous system, and much more. Today's episode is brought to you by https://miketnelson.com/. Sign up for my fitness insider newsletter for daily training, nutrition, and sports performance tips.
Find Matt:
Dr. Mike's Upcoming Conferences:
Referenced Links:
[00:00:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. And if you enjoy all things about fitness, performance, athletic performance, body comp changes adding more muscle, all done in a flexible approach. You will enjoy this podcast. Today I have a very special guest. It is Matt from the oxidative potential podcast.
I was honored to be a guest on his show there a while back, I'll put a link to it in the note section. And I was super impressed with his knowledge, both experience and reading research, and just a massive, huge background. That he has, which I get to talk to a lot of really smart people. But there is a few that have that wide of knowledge and addition have experienced also.
So we had a really wide ranging conversation, everything from certain aspects of training from lifting to hypertrophy to aerobic development, the role of the nervous system and many different side tangents and rabbit holes attached to that. And the podcast today is brought to you by my website, miketnelson.com.
You can go there and get onto the newsletter. And about 90% of my content goes out directly to the newsletter. So go to miketnelson.com. For all of the details. And once you're on the newsletter Just hit reply and drop me a note, say hi, that's by far and away, the best place to reach me.
Sometimes my messages through Instagram and Facebook and all that stuff just gets a completely crazy and I don't. I apologize that don't get back to people, in the newsletter it's free. Send me a note and to say, hi, In addition, I would love to see you in person. So I'm going to be out doing conferences again.
We've been sticking around here at home for awhile. If you're here in Minnesota, I'll be doing an event related to a cold and sauna. We'll have a discussion for that at the end of the month. And then also coming up, I'll be doing a little bit more traveling. I'll be down in Florida.
February 17th through the 18th, I'll be presenting about heart rate variability at the neural sports conference down in Deerfield beach resort. So if you're there, please come up and to say hi, check out my talk. I'll also be at the raise the bar fitness seminar in Dallas, Texas in February. Not presenting. They're just hanging out super stoked to see. All the presenters and especially meet a lot of people. I just haven't been able to see in the last couple of years.
And then also the real coaches summit. You can go to the website, realcoachessummit2023.com will be presenting there. This is in Vegas. On March 6th and seventh, 2023 at the Virgin hotels, Las Vegas. The cool part is the hotel is pretty inexpensive. Flights into Vegas. Normally for most locations are really not too bad.
And it's going to be super fun. There was just going to be a ton of people presenting there, everyone from Dr. Jonathan, Mike. My buddy. John and Stan efforting will be there. Mike Milner, Brad Jensen. Dr. Duane Jackson. Sam Miller, a good friend, Ellie Gilbert is going to be there. Dr. Jade Tatum.
And Alex Viada and many other. So I'll be there talking about metabolic flexibility. It is a two day seminar. You will put a link to the website there. You can get all the information and my good buddy, Andrew coats will also be there. So it'll be a fun time. As going to conferences is always different than just getting the information.
I think getting the information is great. But usually most of the good conversations occur before the seminar, after the seminar. And just the ability to meet people in person. So we're going to be at any of those events. Please let me know. Ah, come up say hi, would. Love to meet you there.
And enjoy this very wide ranging conversation with my good buddy, Matt. And like most of the conversations here on the podcast, it just we just start talking. So you'll be dropped into the middle of that conversation. Thank you so much. I talk to you soon. Enjoy this conversation with Matt from the oxidative potential.
[00:04:49] Dr Mike T Nelson: Thank you so much for doing this and taking time out of climbing trees and hacking 'em down and God knows whatever else you've been doing. .
[00:04:56] Matt DesRoches: Yeah, . No, I'm super honored to be on Mike.
Like it's it's funny like when I started changing my direction into getting into, more physiology, heavy. Like you were the guy, oh, you were always the guy everyone was always, so that's it's
[00:05:10] Dr Mike T Nelson: cool. Yeah. Oh, thank you.
. But how did you get into all the physiology stuff? Because it's rare that I talk to people that have , a wide of background that you do cuz you clearly read a shit ton of research, but Yeah you also practice it like you're not one of these, I call 'em like the warrior research nerds, , where you have just like the research nerd who like reads everything on pub med but they only read the abstracts and they've never trained anyone their entire life.
Yeah. And then you've got the other extreme of, I don't believe in research, we're 20 years ahead of the research. All you pencil necks, I've been doing this for 20 years, I know more than you research nerds. Screw off with your studies. Yeah. And the reality is it's like in between, right? You wanna Exactly.
Take some research which has limits, but hey look, you've got a population, you've got people like you can actually test stuff out. You don't have to stay only within the research or only stay with your 20 years of experience too and keep repeating the same thing over and over. Yeah.
[00:06:07] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. And I think it takes some time and some people they come to both extremes, yeah.
And when I started training when I was quite young, like nine years old, I started in the gym doing s N C and. So whenever I found out about research I was mind blown. I was like, so there's this thing where they, like you've obviously heard of research, but I didn't know that you could just access research on the internet and oh yeah.
So someone had told me at school and yeah, just Google Scholar or PubMed, and you just go type in what you're interested in. And I was just, and then I went so hard in that direction, right? Like I was still a teenager then everything was more research focused and saying okay, squats does this and this for explosive power, or rate of force development, et cetera, et cetera.
And then you start to steer back and, you go back and forth until you find that medium. But it takes quite a bit of time to find that medium. And I find I'm shelling that back over the years go by. It's like the more simplicity I find is more applicable, not only to yourself, but to pretty much everyone else, but just finding the right things, that makes sense for those involved.
[00:07:17] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. My little favorite saying, I like. Physiology is complex, but your actions are relatively simple, right? If you, we could have a probably a 16 hour podcast about just a frigging deadlift from , Ray coating to how the nervous systems works to hamstring glued activation, sequencing, pattern cues, training methods, God knows, whatever.
But a good coach would watch you deadlift and probably just give you one cue. Yes. Yes. Push your big toe down, whatever it is, right? Yes. They have to understand some of the physiology. But I feel so bad for like my early in-person clients where I vomited way too much physiology on 'em and they just, yeah.
They just got worse. And I'm like, oh, this isn't working. . Yeah.
[00:08:03] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. It takes so much time to, to figure out like that balance. And I think too you have to go there. You have to over coach people a little bit. Yeah. You have to be that person and, dig your head in the sand a few times cuz you'll never find that medium.
So I think yeah, I think like it just naturally progressed over time. I was always, into sports and power lifting was a big focus for me for a long time when I was 14 until I was probably 17, 18. And then that Tristan transitioned into m and i competed professionally for years in m A and And that's where the performance, like I was always interested in performance, but that's where that performance and physiology started to play a bigger role in trying to understand, okay, weight cutting.
What are the effects of, dehydrating your spinal fluid and your,
[00:08:51] Dr Mike T Nelson: cerebral before you get a hit in the head.
[00:08:53] Matt DesRoches: Exactly. What does that do to your nervous system and what is, a strength and conditioning camp matter if you're going out and depleting all your blood plasma a day before and going out, all these different things. So I was really trying to, and there was a lot of room, like there was no one talking about physiology at all on m a you at all on you
[00:09:13] Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah. That used to be like what baseball was back in the day. Like baseball back in the day. It was, up until recently, right?
It was, yeah. Oh, don't strength train. It's no, you can't find a M L D team that doesn't have some strength training basketball the same way. It seems like there's some m a, I would say early on was the same way. Yes. It's ah, endurance, you don't need that. I'm like, what are you talking about?
Just, have you ever watched a fight? That guy just completely has no more gas in his tank. Oh. But he is really strong. Yeah. It doesn't matter. He got his ass beat. . Yeah.
[00:09:42] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. I think trying to really pick apart, like why do people not have endurance? What is it? Yeah, they go in and smash themselves every day in the gym.
And the same thing, a lot of guys aren't really that strong either, and it's because, they fall into that gray zone of just hitting those, that black hole training, that kind of like zone three training, we would call it, like endurance training. Yep. But there's like a similar thing for S N C where it's just you're just doing these high intensity, not really high intensity, that kind of medium zone.
So that's where that zone two training, I heard about zone two training and I was like, oh, going down that rabbit hole and then you go into, sprint interval training and you go into, you get, obviously you have the background. I had the background from power lifting, so I understood that to be strong you have to put hype outputs for a very brief moment of time.
And I think that's where a lot of people, didn't understand strength is not strength and conditioning, it's strength training. But yeah. So then it just blossomed from there. I was always working, I started coaching when I was really young, so that was good. I was writing programs for people when I was like, 14, 15 trying to, why am I putting this in here?
What am I doing? You're trying to make things pretty and then you realize okay, what is, what do they actually need? And you realize a lot of people don't need a lot of things. They just need some, basic. Basic tenants to follow in principle. Yeah. But yeah, so that's how that kind of trans, and then obviously, things just got, more hectic with that and more time.
Like I'm sure you were in the same path where it's like you're spending more time programming for people and doing this than you are doing your other work. And then it's just okay, I might as well make this a business. And then you start getting equipment and trying to figure out what does this thing do?
What does this thing do? What does lactate do? What is, nears or, metabolic cart? Where are all these things, how do they work? And then what is the value of them? Because that was the other thing, that was the other step. It's like you get all this data and then what do we do with it?
You know what I mean? Yeah. Sometimes it's just interesting to look and try and find patterns, but how can I apply this to, to, make an intervention here and observe and hopefully see
[00:11:44] Dr Mike T Nelson: something. And that's the hard part because everyone who sells whatever technology from, velocity based training equipment to nears, to metabolic hearts, to whatever will tell you that this is the thing, the only thing that you need to measure.
Like bro. Yeah. You're not measuring lactate. Like where have you been? Like lactates the thing and the nearest people are like, Lactate. We don't need lactate. We were looking at nears. We couldn't tell, SM O two, we didn't, yeah. And the middle of all card people are like, but you're only looking locally.
You're not looking at any systemic effects. And Yeah, they're all exactly. just what are you looking at and what are the limits of it? That's, I had a Moxi device for quite a while and then I bought a PME metabolic cart device, just basically because you could get Moxi inputted into it at the same time.
Yeah. Because I was going on for years and no one was listening. I'm like, you wanna know local and systemic, because I could be hyperventilating. Crazy enough, the coach isn't watching it. That potentially could affect local things of the working muscle. And you probably still wanna know local fatigue because this person has a monster VO two, but they gased out really soon.
It's not VO two then why is it, oh, my quads are burning. Maybe there's something going on there, , yeah. But it to me cuz my background was in engineering, it's this just makes sense to me. And everyone was like no, you don't need all this other stuff. What are you talking about?
You a crazy person. Yeah. And now we're finally getting to the point where it's oh, you mean look at it as a system might be useful. Yeah, exactly. It's probably useful. .
[00:13:18] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. Yeah. I I think. There's a lot more people starting to dial back a lot of that like very kind of tunnel vision on a single Yes.
Application of something they're starting to realize, okay, yeah, everything's actually useful. Like when I talk to people that are really into lactate from Germany, or wherever, and it's oh wow, there's so many different aspects of lactate than I never really thought about in that way.
And that opens up a new rabbit hole to see okay, when I'm measuring lactate and nears and using the card, is there something there that's gonna connect those two dots together for me? Or whether it's velocity based training and wind gates, and trying to see does the power output match for a similar exercise for individuals or whatever it is.
And you start to connect dots and see okay, yeah, there's a ton of use for everything. And I think that when people get into physiology, it's such a, it's such a massive space, it's such a massive landscape to try to absorb. And so what a lot of people do is they pick one person and that one person's probably into one thing and then they get sucked down that rabbit hole.
Rather than picking like 20 people and trying to combine them all together and create your own path. And I think when you create your own path I see people that kind of create their own path and are really tinkering and really using the spirit of science. Those people are usually the people that are on top of the curve or ahead of the curve that are burning their own path rather than if we're all still saying lactates a , like just the crazy things that were said back all
[00:14:52] Dr Mike T Nelson: up until takes your muscles are bro, you gotta like massage that shit out of
[00:14:55] Matt DesRoches: there.
Exactly. Exactly. So it's if we all would've just took some from everyone and whatever, so yeah, I think yeah, and that's what I like about you is you're very good at not hopping on any hy train and whatsoever. Like what I, like whenever I see stuff that you put out there, it's always you never take anything at face value.
You're like, what? Don't trust anyone in fitness . Exactly. Exactly. And that's awesome, right? Because I think most people are too scared to like push back on anything that's out there or have the actual, knowledge base and also, want to do good for people. I think that's a big thing.
If you really want to do good for people, you're gonna want to do due diligence and actually underst. What is actually going on here? Like stuff that you're talking about, growth hormone, all these things. It's like all these things that I'm like yes, . This is what people should be talking about.
It's like anytime I see like a massive people in one area, I knew, I know. That's a time to be weary of something.
[00:15:57] Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh yeah. It's that old phrase whatever direction the masses go, you should probably go the other direction. Can't remember who that's attributed to, but Yeah. Yeah. But that's not how you get known on social media, bro.
You gotta pick your little anthi and stand on it and then just say, tell everyone else how wrong they are and not use any data .
[00:16:17] Matt DesRoches: Exactly. Exactly. I, yeah, so and sometimes you're wrong on things. And that's good. I think if you're wrong on things, that's a good thing. And I think Oh yeah.
Telling people that you're wrong on things and showing them what you learn from being wrong. That's awesome. Like the more times I can be wrong, the probably the more progress I'm probably making. And yeah. And I think, a lot of the things that I've experimented with over the years I would've thought they were crazy.
Some of Dan John stuff and some of the very simple stuff that I'm like, what do you mean do 50 reps every. And you're gonna get stronger . You know what I mean? The same exercises, same. It's yeah, that's, there's no way that can work, especially at 50 to 75%.
There's no way that's gonna work. And then you do these things and you're like, oh wow, this is crazy. I've gotten stronger in some lifts than I've ever been in my life. And you learn, and I think that's just the like you were talking about earlier, right? You gotta get in the trenches.
you gotta get in the trenches. Yeah.
[00:17:13] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that, I won't name the the forum, but I was talking to Cal about this a couple days ago and it was amazing to me. A good friend of mine was a strength coach. I'll leave his name out, but he went on there years ago. God, this is probably 16, 17 years ago.
Right. When like forums were just starting in these small, little, niche areas. This was the strength, performance forum. One of the bigger ones. Yeah. And we're having, he was having this discussion about, I was like, Hey, did you see this new research looking at a plyo step or what's called a paradoxical backward step to go forward?
. So when you're sprinting, you would take a quick step back Yeah. And basically load the back tissue to go forward. Yeah. And all these sprint coaches are like, no, you just let 'em fall forward and stick their leg out in front and then go. Yeah. And he's oh, okay. I grabbed one of my athletes the other day and we had timed them doing both with complete rest and the plyo step was faster.
Yeah. And they're like, no, that can't. And so each day he went on there for a week and he is yeah, I took another one of my athletes today and I tested him and the plyo step was still faster. What did you guys find? And like at the end of the week, he had seven different case studies. Yeah. That he showed that he timed and he videoed them.
And the funniest thing was these are people who run facilities. Like these are people who have access or say they do, yeah. Access to athletes. Not a single one of 'em would be willing to test it. And he's if I'm wrong, like someone, please tell me I'm wrong. Show me your data. Tell me because like I just want to do what's better.
And they all made fun of him and told him he's an idiot. And they actually banned him up. off the forum. No way. And I watched all of this going, what the hell? And then I went through the history of some people I knew and when looked at what some of their posts they had done like three years earlier on.
Just different topics. Yeah. And realized they never looked at any new data. There was still doing the same thing they were three years ago, but they couldn't even justify now why they were doing it. Yeah. And so it was so weird to me and I was it was a useful learning thing, but I was also so disappointed because I thought all the top people in the field that I looked at, I thought they're running experiments all day.
Yeah. I'm like, you have access to people. This is your job as a coach. Like you want results, you're gonna, you're gonna try different things all the time. Yeah. And what I realized was that wasn't really, wasn't really happening that much. Yeah.
[00:19:32] Matt DesRoches: It's crazy to me, like so much coaching goes on through, just there's no actual scientific process.
And that's the thing is especially with S N C, it's can you give me any relative progression that's happened? Where has this person progressed and where, and that's the thing. If you're actually paying attention, a lot of qualities can decline. And if you're a good coach, you're gonna know that and you're gonna know that's natural for certain things.
But, you've talked to coaches say, oh yeah, just straight up everything's been straight up from, since the time they've worked with me. And it's that's you don't, build more muscle mass, get more shredded, get stronger, all at the same time. That doesn't, like that kind of,
[00:20:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: Mindset when she went through past the newbie stage where you can't keep curling soup, cans, . Yeah,
[00:20:10] Matt DesRoches: exactly. Exactly. So I was always weary of that, these coaches just being like, yeah, we have the best results. And it's I was always interested to see what are they measuring, because I've never seen that in, in my own practice, and yeah, just being accountable and being honest with people. And that's hard sometimes, being like, Hey, look, you're probably gonna, these qualities might decline for a bit, but that's just part of the process. If you want to build certain qualities, some things are gonna have to be torn away a little bit, but yeah.
I think that's the people when they step into West side or wherever, whatever type of power lifting Jim, they don't just continuously get stronger at every lift for the rest of their life. Cuz everyone would be a world record holder if that was the case. It goes in waves and obviously there's other types of supplements going on in places like that, so that affects things.
But it's yeah, I'm just, I'm yeah, I think those things are super important. But one thing that I'm a super big fan of that you're into is grip training. Oh nice. And yeah, I love that stuff and cause I climbed a lot and I was going through the ah, I M G A thing and like mountain guiding it takes eight years.
It takes forever to do that. But so I was always big in the grip even when I was younger cuz like wrestling, it was just a massive advantage. If you could grab something on someone and they could not retrieve their arm or their ankle or whatever it was, you literally just, isolated something and locked it down.
So then I, you get into other sports and you realize, okay, grip is actually like this huge primer for your nervous system, whether it was like, power lifting or whatever it was. And yeah, so I got big into grip training and I see the stuff that you're doing. I'm like, this guy's legit into grip training.
Like legit either got cool man, like how many times a week do you do grip training?
[00:21:47] Dr Mike T Nelson: It's literally Component of every time I train, unless I'm doing some cardiovascular stuff. Yeah. And I've been like super lucky. My good buddy Adam Glass used to live in the Twin Cities.
So I used to be able to go over and train with him a lot. He's down in Texas now with his wife and so we'll travel through and hang out with him for three, four days in a row. And we got on the South Padre to Kiteboard and come back and he is probably one of the freakiest guys, especially for body weight now.
He just did a seminar that Dennis Rogers put together for bill Kame. So Rogers had a bunch of guys come out to do, strength stuff for Kaz. And so Adam did a one arm hanging from a pull-up bar. Yeah. And then on the other hand he did a 45 pound plate curl and press and he even stopped like halfway up doing the plate curl and looks around and finished the rep.
So it was just crazy easy, like doing a 45 pound plate curl is just freaky. So we're talking about is the plate's actually flat on your hand? Yeah, so the amount of wrist strength and finger strength and then to do that while hanging. Just crazy stuff that's insane. But the nice part is I've never really known how to train grip any other way.
Yeah. So cuz like people will ask me and they're like, ah, do you go on all those grip forums and all this stuff? I'm you don't, I'm like, no. They're like, why don't you? I'm like, one cause I don't care. And two, yeah. If I have a question, I'm just gonna call and ask Adam . Yeah. Because his coaching is super useful, right?
So he is one of these people who can do it, put in the time and effort, but he can also explain to you how he got there. Sometimes people are just really good at stuff and they can't explain anything. Exactly. Yeah. But yeah, it's been super fun. What do you find for your top payoff exercises for grip stuff?
[00:23:31] Matt DesRoches: I still do quite a bit of hang boarding, Oh sure. Climbing stuff. Yeah. Cause it transfers over, if I want to go climb or something like that. Definitely it saves you cuz isometric strength and is and it, and for the tendons too, right? Yep. So I still do some of that. I'll do a little bit of just basic body building, like wrist curls and stuff like that, just to an extensor work, whether it's with bands or just with dumbbells or stuff like that.
But I got a couple captains across. I got some pinch blocks and stuff like that. I got the geez, what is it? The circular one there, the iron mine, the hub, stuff like Oh, tricky stuff. Yeah. I just it's weird. It's just fun. I just, I think that's the thing that's fun about grip training is it's if you're programming, grip training, you're probably not having that much fun.
Maybe you are, but I think it's just fun. Like you just toss it into workouts and you try stuff. And the recovery's much better on, on grip training than it is on a lot of different muscle groups and types of training. So yeah. I love it. I absolutely love it. Yeah.
[00:24:27] Dr Mike T Nelson: And there's a weird neuro, you have to be like the right kind of person to get all excited about, like tiny changes too, even like on a axle or Saxon bar or something like that.
So one of my main goals is to lift the 175 pound inch dumb so just one hand deadlift. Yeah. And so I've been working on that for probably six or seven years. And so it's rewarding, but yet frustrating at the same time because your progress is so small. Yeah. And it's such a weird thing to have people come over.
So I've got smaller cast bells. I've got a hundred, a 1 35, and then a 1 75. So I got different sizes. Yeah. And it's amazing with a cast bell with the two and three eighth inch handle. So for listeners like the size of a pop can Yeah. But the fact that it's cast and it doesn't rotate at all Yeah. Makes it so much hard to stop that rotation in order to pick it up.
So like most dudes who even lift, I would say people have been. It's like a 50 50 chance if they could even pick up the a hundred pound one. And these are like, people who lift have been doing stuff for a while, maybe not necessarily grip stuff. Yeah. So it's a weird thing to get excited about these like very small progressional things, but I don't know, it's just fun.
I was asking Adam one day, I said, what is like the key to grip training? You've been doing this for decades, obviously been very successful at it. He's if they pick the lifts, you wanna do the ones that have a higher overload but still a grip component are gonna have the highest transfer.
. And then get a little bit fancier after that. Only if you need to. Yeah. And then just do that as many days as you possibly can for years to decades, . And I was like and I said, is that what makes you successful? He's yep. Because my autistic ask and go back out there and do the same thing every day again.
It's so true. And then go to I went to the grip competition in Finland a couple years ago. We'll hopefully be going back this year again. And Finland is just huge for grip training. Like it's it's not a huge deal there, but it's way bigger than it is in the us. Like people just showed up to watch the event, which crazy.
Yeah. But it was so fun. But. Everybody. There was so much on the spectrum. It was crazy. from like the, Arto, who's this huge Finnish guy, yeah, probably 6 4, 6 5, easily over 300. Like it looks like you put a chicken wing in his thumb muscle, like probably the strongest pinch grip on the face of the planet.
Yeah. And he is on the spectrum, but he is this outgoing, super nice gregarious finish dude. Which is weird in and of itself. Yeah. But gets zero social cues at all to like the people who are like hyper obsessed about all these little intricacies. And it was like super fun. Everyone was awesome. I loved it.
It was great. But it's just so interesting how certain niches are, all these people are all drawn towards it, which, when you look back makes sense. And yeah. You could say the same thing about Olympic weightlifting. Yes. You gotta be a special kind of human to do basically two, maybe three lifts Woo-hoo.
Like for decades of your life. Like sometimes multiple training sessions per day. Yes. Or, mixed martial arts, at least you get a little bit of variety power lifting, Hey, let's pick three lifts and do those the rest of our life. Yes. So I think everyone's their own special person in just different areas too.
[00:27:49] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it is some of those things. So niche, it really takes a certain type of characteristics. To stick to something like that is basically irrelevant to the rest of the world and holds a lot of times like no social value because you're always doing it alone. No, nobody cares.
[00:28:07] Dr Mike T Nelson: you know what I mean? You're always
[00:28:08] Matt DesRoches: doing it alone, so you got no one to do it with. So it's like those are, if you stick to something like that, yeah. You have to have certain type of qualities. And . Yeah. But I like the one thing I do notice about grip training though is it does transfer like with c n s output, like people that have really strong grips know how to try really hard, and that's, oh, yeah.
Yeah. And that's what I notice about boulders and rock climbing was like, these boulders, had an amazing ability to create an insane amount of intensity in a short period of time. , similar to a power lifter. But with grip training, it's almost because it's so isolated and same, similar to the feet, that it just, it creates it, if you hone in on it, it really creates this whole new level of being able to find intensity in other things you do.
I find, but yeah, no, it's yeah, to me it's like a huge grip is always something like, I think with strength training is always something that, like anything you're doing just. The frigging crap out of it. Just grip the shit out of it and you'll learn how to find more out of yourself, I think when you focus on grip with a lot of things or with your feet with a lot of things.
Whether it's sprinting
[00:29:17] Dr Mike T Nelson: or, yeah. Cause those are the analogy I use. Those are like your tires. So if I'm a Yes Formula one car, I could have the best driver, the best engine, everything tuned to the max, but I put a, four pair of like crappy tires on there. It doesn't matter.
I'm spinning donuts in the parking lot. Yes. But even if I just put an average engine an okay driver and good tires on it, I'm probably gonna do pretty good, right? Yes. Could I upgrade the engine? Could I upgrade the driver? Sure. And would you feel that if your grip is weaker that neurologically you'll be I'm putting my air quotes here, shut down or you'll be limiting the amount of power that you could be using then?
[00:29:55] Matt DesRoches: 110%. I noticed that with people whenever they increase their grip strength, pretty much most of their lifts will go up a lot of their big lifts that have grip strength involved in it to some degree. Even for things that grip like bench press for example. Yeah. Like your grip has nothing to do with you getting the bar up.
But if you learn how to improve strength, and that's the thing took me a long time to learn that strength is a skill. You're trying to find a pathway and create a superhigh. And create an efficient, like nerve conduction velocity, all these things, right? All these things that come together in a robust nervous system to be able to provide that output.
And that's a skill, and it takes time to learn that. And I think a lot of people approach strength a little bit backwards, where they just think it's oh, it's just a sets and reps thing. And it's yeah, you'll get there that way. But it's still a skill. Just like sprinting, people just think, oh, I just gotta go like really hard
It's no, you have to go really hard the right way. The right way, yeah. And the right way takes time to learn how to get more out. But yes I do notice that people that have really strong, just naturally strong grips, they have a really good ability to produce high outputs with a lot of things.
And it might not even be the things that they're, used to doing even with sprinting or, on the cycle aome or whatever it is. But yeah I do think that it's just something that's always been sticking my head over the years.
[00:31:18] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a two-way street, right?
Because I ask people, I'm like, have you ever met a really strong person that just had a horribly weak grip ? And the answer is almost never right. At the high level you will see different levels within compared to their peers. Yes, some people will have a stronger, or not a strong grip, but just across the board.
I don't think there's really a whole lot of exceptions there. And I think that's a two-way street, right? Yeah. So most of the athletes I train are not grip sport athletes. . But I know that if I just train their hand in these slightly different positions with really five to 10 minutes of extra work, I'm not like trained 'em like a grip sport athlete.
Yeah. It makes a huge difference in the output long term. Yes. Of all of their lifts and like you said, even lifts where you don't think it's an issue. So we had a guy years ago, his deadlift was mixed grip was stuck at 5 85. And started working with them and I'm like, Hey, what's your, double overhand grip on a deadlift?
He's I don't pull deadlifts that way. Somebody not gonna pull up Max deadlift that way. But yeah, I don't remember what it was, but it was I think like 230 pounds below his, mixed strip. It was something that was just horribly bad. That's crazy. And so we said, okay, let's work on your crush script.
We had him do some open palm pinch script. , not a lot of stuff, just a few sets, here and there. Nothing crazy. Didn't change his deadlift training at all. And I think in eight weeks he pulled six 15 or six 10 or something. That's crazy. Yeah. It was just, and it wasn't that he wasn't strong enough, I don't think, before it was just even with the mixed grip, there's a component where his brain was like, I don't think we can hold onto this thing. , I don't think you've got enough strength to do this, and we're gonna, just ratchet you back a little bit to make sure that you don't get close to that edge. And once that kinda limiter is removed, he had the structure, he had most of the strength I think already there.
I don't think we magically did anything to 'em. Exactly. It's, we just pulled part of that limiter away and whoop, there went,
[00:33:17] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. Yeah. And and when you think about strength, how do you get stronger? There's several ways and like hypertrophy has always been debated and it's be it's becoming more debated now. Technically, if you improve like biomechanically, technically you can, and it's not necess, you're not necessarily getting stronger. The muscle may not, and the, and nervous system may not be getting stronger, but you might be able to lift more. That's always a hard one to try and wrap your head around.
But ray coating, inter intra muscular coordination and then like desensitizing the GTOs and muscle spins, those things you gotta approach one of those. And a lot of the times it's are you maxed out on one of those? Are you maxed out on your technique? Are you maxed out on, hypertrophy for like your weight class or whatever it is?
And I think the nervous system, like over the years I've like really changed my kind of opinion on, what I think makes a robust, like how to stress a nervous system. What makes the robust nervous system. I used to think it was just like all about being strong, but it's also. Being healthy will give you.
And this is the thing that I like, I've thought about this for years and I even did a video about it a while back, but I think having a healthy nervous system as you age is more of an indicator of being strong when you're older than actually just being strong. I like that. I think like people that, wherever it is, blue zones or these things, I think a lot of those people, the reason why or wherever someone is stronger when they're 90, it's probably because, they don't have a bunch of diseased processes ongoing on the body.
They don't have a lot of their mitochondria depleted. And also like when you think about the health of your cardiovascular system and your vasculature, that's a huge important, getting blood flow to the nervous system, having a healthy spine. And that's the one thing that's gotten popular now that I'm pulled back on a lot.
It's ruptures don't really mean anything. There's no pain. It doesn't matter. And it's if there's no pain, and they're talk about people is what I asked. Yeah, exactly. It's just because someone's asymptomatic doesn't mean that a disruptor is fine. Talk to them when they're 80 years old and see how well, they can move some of their muscles.
Or provide an output. And I. When don't eat a high inflammatory diet and do things that are more protective for your brain, those things are gonna provide you a base to have a higher output for longer when you treat your body well. Rather than just being like, I'm just gonna bulldoze my way through a China shop and trying to like out strong , myself to longevity.
So that's one thing that I've come to realize is take care of your body, take care of your brain take care of your psyche, right? All those things are gonna really allow you to provide an output for longer, in my opinion than just trying to like, just tick off the boxes of doing these things cuz it's gonna make me, yeah.
I don't know. What do you think about because I know, that's a big thing now. It's like strength. I do believe strength is a big indicator for longevity, but I think there's a lot of ways to get there, and I think sometimes people might overdo it on that side.
It's how strong a strong if strength training provides you a good social outlet. That's, I think more important than a, and in some ways in the strength training, yes, I know we are, oh yeah. Strength training purpose. Yeah. But if you have no social. And going to the gym with your buddies is your social life.
Even as you age, like I see plenty of people they meet, their friends at 70 years old in the gym every day, every morning. I think that's a huge massive aspect of, keeping someone healthy longer. You get a double bang for your buck, but yeah.
[00:36:37] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I mean I think there's, I think we're getting to the point now where people are pretty bought into the three markers we've got good data on longevity is grip strength, lower body strength, maybe muscle mass cuz they're tied together.
Yeah. And then VO two max. So robic capacity, cardiovascular capability, whatever word you want to use for them. Yeah. But I think what's happening now is people are becoming too hyper-focused on that. I still don't see people doing enough grip training, but I think they are doing more aerobic stuff now.
Maybe an over alliance on zone two, which we can get to at some point. And like you said how strong is strong, right? I see. Yeah. God, some of the consults I've done within the past year, dude bros, deadlift five 50 bench and three 15, for reps has a really good VO two max grip strength is appropriate.
He's man, I just wanna maximize my longevity. And so you talk to him and you're like, what You realize. He doesn't do anything else. It's do you have a social life? Do you have a purpose? Yeah. What do you do for recreation? He is I lift more. That's great. I love lifting too.
But yeah at some point I just feel like, you think of all the intricate circuits in the brain and like the analogy I've used is what are the hardest things to teach robots to do? And we're seeing robots do running and jumping now, but catching a ball, like even what a five year old could do, for a robot is incredibly, extremely difficult.
Yeah. So I think like I've been pushing people more towards just recreation. Yes. Like just go pick a ball sport and have fun. Like I, I don't even care. Play fucking pickle ball if you want tennis. Yes. Golf. Like obviously I'm biased. I'll say go kite surf. Learn to surf. Yes. Go play in an environment where you have some control but yet you don't.
Yes. The environment is constantly changing. Ball, sports, environment, waves, wind. Yes. Because I just think we're becoming a nation of like sea slugs. Like the sea slug floats through the ocean and finds a rock and then ah, just eats its own brain. Cause it never has to move again. Exactly. I think we've become so hyper focused on longevity that we forget that a lot of those things come automatically with a sense of purpose.
They come with community, they come with being outside variety of movement. Just like all these things we just. Take for granted that, I dunno, I just think there should be a greater emphasis. And like you said, you go to the blue zones, you go to other areas. I think an underappreciated thing is the sense of purpose, the social aspect.
The people are active, they're doing different things, recreation, dance, all that is like relatively common there compared to at least in the us
[00:39:16] Matt DesRoches: Yes. Yeah. So much though. So much and you don't see people people like, getting after it and whatever they're doing, but it's like there's balance there, , there's balance there in those places. And so yeah, I think it's just like you said, like picking a few things and like picking a few things. Like especially with stuff like kite surfing and ball sports, like that's massively cognitively demanding, , right? We know that if you were to compare a sport like power lifting versus Olympic weightlifting, like there's a lot more cognitive effort going on and something like Olympic lifting, like there's all these different spots that you have to hit, right?
Every, and yes, when you're competing, you're shutting off, but there's, yeah. Yeah. There's a demand for your brain.
[00:39:57] Dr Mike T Nelson: Try. It's more complex. Try and learn. Yeah. There's more fine
[00:39:59] Matt DesRoches: motor skill. Exactly. Exactly. And I think the more of that you can, put in, and that's the thing is I know a lot of people just check the box of okay, I gotta get my meals in, I gotta hit the gym.
And it's yeah, but and you go to work and it's like, how many steps do you take today? Or how many, all these things. It's it's not always about just checking certain boxes about trying to live life. Cuz when I think about humans and how far we've come from like the hardwiring and the biological aspects of what a human is and what humans were designed to do how far we've come from that.
It's you gotta try and pull that back to okay, if I wanna live a long time, I should probably pull myself back closer to what my body was designed to do and what my body has evolved to do. That just makes the most, and it's very simple to give to people like, do some physical labor every day.
Yeah. It doesn't have to be the gym. Go rake your yard, , whatever it is. And it's great. You get stuff done when you do physical labor around the house, like it's an awesome way and you have a, like a nice clean house and whatever else. You take care of the things. And that stuff's not sitting at the back of your head now.
But yeah, I think and especially if you wanna look at like mitochondrial research, like low level physical activity, it's one of the best things you can do for your mitochondria. Baran Lee no. Wrote a great book. Mitochondria anyways, it's a great book. Tons of citations in there.
Going through some of those research papers wow, there's so much things that are good out there for your mitochondria. Some things on the verge now talking about breath holds and, h alpha one with stuff like that, and like the factors that might improve mitochondria, but low level phy physical activity.
And it all connected to kind of Doug Wallace's research with the looking about uncoupling proteins and the mic mitochondria and like how important that is, especially if you're, you have certain genetics which have less or more uncoupling proteins. Like regardless low level physical activity is like such a massive booster for health, I think.
And you feel great oh yeah, it's hard. It's hard for all of us. A lot of us sit down now a lot and it's hard and it sucks when you go, but you just try your best to offset those.
[00:42:03] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. I think about that with kiteboarding it's like, Because sometimes in social media I get interesting emails cuz I'll post like eating a poptart and drinking a beer after I got done kiteboarding.
And people like lose their mind. They're like, oh, you're the nutrition guy, what are you doing? You're a bad example. I'm like, I had one beer and had two Poptarts. I just rode literally 70 miles in a bay. Back and forth. Back and forth. Yes. For four hours in a row. Yeah. Am I really that worried about two Pop-tarts and a beer?
Yeah. Hanging out on the beach with my friends watching the sunset. Yeah. No, I'm not like, I don't do this every day either. And even if I did, it's probably still not that big of a deal. Yeah, but it's I think people go so hard down one path. Yeah. That, I don't know what your thoughts are on this, but I think they actually start to take good things.
But in terms of physiology start to become fragile when they're doing the same things a hundred percent of the time. Yes. Because they were told that this is the best things to
[00:43:04] Matt DesRoches: do. Yes. So much though I remember, I'll never forget. There was a video randomly, I don't know where I saw it, I don't know if it was on YouTube or on social media like a long time ago.
And it was Pat Davidson talking about yeah, I love Pat , anti-fragile mine. He is yeah, I don't even know what exactly what he said. He is probably talking about like microplastics and, estrogens and stuff like that. He is you have to have a mindset that you are indestructible.
And yes, to a degree. Let's I get it folks like, don't go ahead and run your head into a brick wall, but Right. What he's saying is the more time you spend, creating this environment as everything as this, massive threat to the organism and you gotta watch this and you can't do that and this and that, that burden in itself does create fragility in many ways.
Not only in the psyche, but in the body as well. Cuz those stress responses, that's a thing. And that affects your physiology. And I think if you look at some of the research on like low level doses of radiation, all these different things, and the hormetic effects of literally pretty much every toxin, pretty much anything.
Even some poisons, it's like there is hormetic effects to. Mostly everything, and not saying that you're gonna, go out there and drink strict nine and expect to Yeah. Oh, I'm gonna get a tic effect. But I'm saying like a lot of these things in small doses, like radiation, we thought for years, like there's no acceptable level.
. And then over time and thousands of research studies, it's okay, there's, this is actually more nuanced than what we thought. We actually don't have the answer, but it actually seems to upregulate any oxidant pathways and actually provide benefit in certain cases. And it's like you start to realize okay, yes, okay.
Yeah, cold can kill you, but also a hormetic effect of cold, can be very beneficial. Just like exercise, just like everything else. And that's how a lot of supplements people don't realize that's how a lot of supplements work. Is there an actual stressor to the body? And they upregulate it's a hormetic effect.
Like a lot of these diet, whether probably people have stuff in their supplement cabinet.
[00:45:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: It's a proposed mechanism of vitamin C. Isn't some of the reasons you're saying vitamin C is a prooxidant, but your body has a positive response to it being a prooxidant. Exactly.
[00:45:16] Matt DesRoches: Yeah.
So that anti-fragile mindset and like to a degree just being like, I'm gonna live a healthy life, but I'm also a robust human being that can absorb. Some stress here. And some of those stresses are, exponentially beneficial.
[00:45:31] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I always think maybe cuz I'm getting older what do you wanna do with your life?
And what do you, at the end of your day like, no one's gonna sit down and be like, okay, I made it to 90, that's it. Eh, how many days did I lift? How much did I work? Ooh, my H R V score is still good. It's , you're probably not gonna care that much about it. Those things are important. Of course, yes.
But it's gonna be, the memories and the stuff where you probably went off the rails a little bit in Vegas with your friends and, you don't wanna do that routinely, but yes I've often joked that, if Maynard from Toole shows up at my door and says Hey man, let's go hang out tonight and party and do whatever.
I wanna be ready, I don't wanna be like, now I'm mad, I'm going bed. Just pass my bedtime, bro. Yeah. That's a infrequent thing. I think that's where exactly where people go wrong. It's, you've got most of the population doing everything backwards where they're sleeping, four and a half hours a night trying to live on two liters of coffee.
Yeah. But then you get into the fitness space and you've got the. Neurotic people that are so worried about this, nth degree of, oh my God, do I take this form of magnesium at night and is it 300 milligrams or 325? I don't know. I can't sleep now cuz I messed up my sleep and my aura says I'm gonna die.
And , it just goes so far off the other end of the spectrum that's not healthy either. Yeah. That's like the opposite of what you're trying to get to.
[00:46:48] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. It's hard too. It's hard when you work with people that you you have to dial a lot of things back,
[00:46:53] Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh yeah. Have to, especially higher level athletes, you just spend most of your time telling 'em not to do stupid shit.
Yes. Yes.
[00:46:59] Matt DesRoches: Yes. And that oh yeah, that little decrease doesn't really matter. Or Right. Those little things don't really matter all that much and you have to shelter them from some things because it's just gonna destroy their performance and destroy, their psychology to to perform well.
And yeah. So I think, yeah, there's just, there's so many things I think are huge benefit psychologically that people are missing. But yeah. What's do you have any kind of practices around not practices, but is it just Do you implement things like meditation or do you implement things like, okay, I am gonna go and me and my wife are gonna have a dinner like three times a week or maybe we're gonna have a movie night.
Do you do you feel yourself having to put those things in there? A lot of the times to check yourself? Because I feel like with Type A individuals it's you just go. And the things that's probably gonna prevent you from having a heart attack at 75 or whatever, it's like more social connection or more like time offloading and toning down that, that arousal and yeah.
[00:47:59] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Especially when you're, when you own your own business and you work online, which I love. Yes. I transitioned to start doing this probably 10 years ago now. Yeah. But you have the opportunity to work all the time and it's harder when you generally like your work . Yes. And your lifestyle is attached to it.
And I always have this weird sort of neurotic fear that I can't believe I'm still doing this and the rug's gonna get pulled out. I'm gonna be back in a cube tomorrow. And I've almost cuz I've worked in MedTech stuff for 12 years in the past and for me to go back to a cube now, I was talking to a buddy of mine the other day and I'm like, I think Uber driver is higher on my list than going to back working in a cube.
But then you have to crosscheck your own neurosis with the fact. , you can't work all the time. At some point you're not becoming productive. So one of the things you need to do, like you said, long term to make sure you have a stable relationship, like you feel like you have a purpose, like you're balancing the other end of the spectrum.
Because especially finishing my PhD and starting a business for years, my solution, everything was just listen to more death metal and drink more coffee and just work your way through it, and that works to a certain degree. And then I don't, I haven't talked too much about this, but when I finished my PhD, I was destroyed for two years.
I was a complete, just a complete wreck, and when you're working one other every way possible, really, like I had, when I was doing my PhD, I had, just blood panels done and had some hormone levels drawn. Yeah. My testosterone always came back. 200, 180 9, 2 19, like just, most luckily, my blood lipids were never bad.
Okay. But everything else, thyroid, everything else was just destroyed. And it was my own and I knew it was my own doing. Yeah. So I told my doc, I'm like, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. This is not health advice. Do not anyone do this, but tell me if I'm gonna do something that's gonna permanently destroy myself.
Don't let me go over the edge, but I'm gonna probably go right up to the edge and wave at it and look over the edge and Yeah. And when. You're taking caffeine, power naps in the back of your car at nine in the morning just to get through your day. Like stuff's out of balance, right?
Yes. So I got through all that and then I just was so tired and I'm like, oh, I've got a big sleep debt. And so I was sleeping like 12 hours a night. Like I go to bed at eight, I'd get up at eight the next day, or I'd go to bed at seven and I sleep in 10, 12 hours a night for four months. Wow. And I could sleep.
Luckily I didn't have sleep disturbances and eventually got so bad. I talked to a doc buddy of mine, had a bunch of blood work done, and they put me on some D H E A and pregnant alone, and all my hormones were crashed. And yeah, it took about two and a half years to get through it. And I think if I were to go back again, I would've done, like you said, more low intensity stuff.
I would've done a lot more aerobic based stuff. Yeah. Because I think my aerobic base had just completely eroded during that time, and I didn't realize it because it was such a gradual process combined that with just a, massive amount of stress. So now I try to do meditation most mornings, just a relaxing, zen style.
Go stare at a tree type thing. I'll try to schedule like flow tanks. They just call like sensory deprivation times. Yeah. And then I started doing that probably five years ago. And just because I was scared to do it, it's let's lock you in this chamber for an. Okay. What am I left there with the thoughts in my own head oh, hell no, I don't wanna do that.
That sounds, I wanna distract myself. This is a horrible idea. Yeah. Yeah. And then you think about it and you're like, this is probably why I should do this. Yes. So I've gotten better, I think, of finding down times and even just scheduling my day, realizing that I think most humans, if they're extremely productive, at best, you're talking five to six hours a day of high productivity.
Yeah. Of like really high level trying to understand something or writing a program or writing something or output or whatever. I don't think you can go much past that routinely. Yes, you can definitely have spurts where that's a little higher, a little bit lower. So once I realized that backing up and going, okay, what are the things I wanna do?
What are things I'm not gonna do? Like someone asked me the other day, like, why don't you have a TikTok account? I'm like, oh God. No . Like you have to have hard boundaries of what you're gonna do. Yeah. And then prioritizing exercise and we'll try to prioritize, what night we have date night, what time I start, what time I, I get done.
Yeah. I'm getting better at pushing the time that I stop a little bit earlier. And then we schedule in, we try to do a kite porting trip, at least in the fall and in the spring. And so when we're down there, Generally I try to work less. So my thing is whenever it's windy, I want the option to, go there and hang out and, that's a lot more social.
We see a lot more people and stuff too, but yeah. Yeah, I'd be curious on your thoughts, what you do, because I think it's an area, especially for people that love to exercise. I literally have changed my schedule. One of the reasons I wanna work for myself was one, I didn't wanna set an alarm, and two, I could lift at one in the afternoon, which for me is all much better than at any other time in the day.
Yes. And it's if you do your own business, you can make those things happen and it's just kind part of what you do. So I kinda like the autonomy of setting things up the way that I want too. Yeah.
[00:53:14] Matt DesRoches: And that's a hard thing to find in life is you are usually gonna have to incur quite a bit of risk to set things up the way you want to do.
Whether it's starting a new business or, becoming your own personal contractor, whatever it is. And that's what, that's basically now I just started a new business, so I've been, I'm in that phase where I'm just like overdrive and I know and I'm trying to just salvage what I can, so I have a little bit of time in the morning, even though it's, crow piss in the morning ,
[00:53:41] Dr Mike T Nelson: I'm stealing that, that's gonna go the newsletter somewhere.
[00:53:46] Matt DesRoches: It's I just, I take a little bit of time in the morning. And just a little bit of time at night. And that's like we were talking before. It's been 120 hour weeks for me for the last few months, that's not gonna last forever. And back to my normal schedule, it's massage is a big thing.
I'm a big believer in massage. Like everyone's different and everyone has different psychological preferences around massage. Some people are just not comfortable with it. But, I spent quite a bit of time in Thailand and I just realized how different my quality of life was.
And obviously Thailand's a great place regardless of the massage, but like
I
[00:54:19] Matt DesRoches: was getting like two to three massages a day after training sessions. Nice. And then just like nice seeing the difference in quality of life and also my arousal, and learning that, okay, the quicker I can bring myself back down after training, the more recovery I'm gonna get.
The better I'm gonna feel, the more enjoyable I'm gonna be around my friends and eating and all these different things. So massage is a huge one. Doing any form of I find like brief stressors. , is a big one and I know what that sounds like, counterproductive for a lot of people.
But like stuff like ice bath stuff, like breath holds those things I find like hugely beneficial. For providing like a contrast of like huge, massive stimulation, but you, as long as you're coming down from those and depending with cold water, like depending where it's on your body or like your face versus your, your entire body being in, in, in the water those can cause you know, a little bit of different things going on there.
But yeah, so cold water, meditation, different forms of meditation. I got into throat singing for a bit, like the vibrations of it and stuff like that. Like just different things. Finding time to turn that switch in whatever way you can. And setting up your day, like you talked about, setting up your day.
Setting up your day is so important for quality of life and help. If you just wake up and the first thing you do is just start looking at emails or start looking at work or whatever you're gonna be fighting to try and come back from that all day long, your body's going to a place where it's gonna take a lot to try and intervene and pull yourself back out of that.
Cuz once you start it, it's it's hard to stop it. So I think just setting up your day appropriately and allowing you to have those slots where you're putting out high output. Or deep work or whatever. I think that's super important. And understanding, like you talked about earlier, is one of the biggest things is like when to say no to things.
Oh,
[00:56:14] Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah. Just be like, I'm still
[00:56:15] Matt DesRoches: working on that. It's hard. It's so hard to say no to certain things, especially when they provide opportunity. , but sometimes you have to realize that opportunity is going to detract in the long run too much from you. So it's just understanding, Hey, I can't do this as much as I want to do this, and as much as I might be able to make it work for a couple months or whatever, it's just, I know it's gonna be a spiral.
So I think learning to say no, and I remember Tim Ferris saying that a long time ago, just like talking about, specifically about learning how to say no to things and, there's more tactful ways to do it and there's also more ways that like doesn't close a door on you saying no to certain things, but just learning how to set up your day and playing is a big one.
One of the things I, I heard from like Paul Cze, he is ta talking about, ceremonies and different things like that was like, when was the last time you played. When was the last time, like you loved, when was the last time you danced? When was the last time you sang and that's like when you, when those things stop, that's the creation, that's the starting point for disease and, your health decline. And yes. People there's many other factors, but I think, play is something like, you talk about kiteboarding, like kite board's been on my list for so long, it's like I can't anything else in my
[00:57:28] Dr Mike T Nelson: garage podcast on kiteboarding, .
[00:57:29] Matt DesRoches: I just can't. I'm like, as much as I wanna do, I'm like, it just gimme three years. And I know for sure at three years, like it'll start then. But there's just so much crap that I have and it just sits in the back of my brain.
I'm like, I'm not doing this thing, I'm not doing that thing, I'm not doing this. And I'm like, I just gotta find some. So I gave myself a timeline cuz one of my best friends too from Sweden, he's huge into Oh, nice type boarding. And he moved to pi oh. Basically for kite boating for a bit. And he's oh, I'll just go to school here or something.
But he's literally the trade wins were so good. He is just yeah, no, this is what I'm coming here for. But so play, I think I just, I think a lot of people, if they asked themselves when was the last time they actually played it would be probably a while. , when was the last time they played anything and felt like a kid?
And I think that's a super important factor for health. It's yeah, it's intertwined with social but yeah, so I think, just trying to find a good balance of a lot of those things. And at certain times of the year, it's harder to do certain things, so you just have to rearrange and, focus on other things and introduce other things.
But yeah, no I'm a huge, I'm a huge believer in setting up your day and having dedicated time where you turn off your brain like you're processing information all frigging day long. No one would just step on a treadmill all day long, the amount of information that we take in compared to like even a hundred years ago is insane.
Oh, it's gotta be huge. It's insane. And I got in that pattern where I was like, if I wasn't taking inf Infor in information, I felt like I was going backwards. Oh, yeah. Cause we get sucked into that. We were like, I just need to learn more. You're just, but I just think you gotta pull back on that sometimes and be like, that textbook is still gonna be there in another, two months, three months, a year down the line.
Just, take some time and shut your brain off completely . Yeah.
[00:59:16] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Do you find, like if you're taking in I find that if I take in information all the time, The amount of new thoughts or being able to put ideas together is almost zilch. Yes. Like I have to purposely do things, so like I'll set up input so I have input and output.
Yeah. In a perfect world, if I'm trying to figure out a problem or come up with a product and then it's a long time skill. It's like several months that I'll read a whole bunch of stuff on it, believe it said, keep reading until I feel like the glass is full.
Yeah. And then in a perfect world, I would just go kiteboard for two weeks. Yeah. One thing about it, one bring a single book. And the times that I've been able to do that, like the way I've been able to make connections is pretty cool. But I haven't, I'm not thinking about it. I'm not trying to make the connection.
It's just like I'm allowing space and movement and play and socializing and these other things for my brain to figure out the problem on its own. And it just feels like it shows up out of nowhere versus if I keep going with the input all the time, it's yeah, I can force stuff out, but it feels like it's regurgitating, it doesn't feel like I'm crossing this with anything else.
It just feels like I'm just spinning back out what I took in. Yes.
[01:00:31] Matt DesRoches: Oh I couldn't agree more. It takes time for your subconscious. It's like when you start, whether it's through like self hypnosis or maybe you're doing like you. , maybe some type of the, things inogenic nature or whatever. You're saying drugs yeah. . I just didn't wanna blast drugs in on your phone. Psychedelics or anything. Psychedelics or whatever it is. It's like no matter what you're doing, like it takes time for the psyche to really absorb that. And I think people would talk about integration and things like this.
It's yeah, you might have just, lived 10 lifetimes and solved the universe, but it's gonna take you a long time for that. Any of that to even trickle down and digest at all. Oh, yeah. A and as much as you want to think yeah, okay. I know the points for the points that actually sink in.
How many times have you learned something like the simplest lesson and you go out and make that same mistake? It just has to, you just have to let things sink in. So I think you couldn't be more right on that. Like the quality is so much lower when you're just constantly, constantly filling your brain with information rather than, having those set rest periods.
We're just like, I'm not gonna take in information, new information, I'm just gonna listen to music for a couple days on my, whatever my drives instead of a podcast or, whatever it is. And just let my brain like rest and absorb and refocus and then put something together out of that.
[01:01:47] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I think your point about the more. Disruptive. You do something, the longer the integration or the kind of the stitching together, everything is or at least appears to be on the back end. Yes. I did five glasses of ayahuasca one night in Costa Rica in I was two and a half years ago.
And I still feel like I'm unpacking shit from that. Yes. Yes. Not in a bad way. Everything went great. It Yes. would not recommend this to people for God's sakes, don't do this. There's a whole lot of shit that could have gone completely sideways. Yeah. But it went well. Next year we went back it was much more milder.
Yeah. But yet even now, it's almost a year ago now, I did that one. I'm still coming up with things that I was like oh. Or you go back and review the notes, you sketch down, you're like, yeah. Oh yes. It was like, one was a year ago, the other one was like two years ago now.
Yes. But so disruptive that I think you just need time to for that processing. And I get a nervous, of people who do things that I would say are much more, I don't wanna say radical, but more extreme or more disruptive, that they don't give them time. They don't give themselves that backend processing, whether that's to a lesser degree taking in information or being in a traumatic situation or just a super high intense training round, whatever it is.
Like the more you push that intensity, like you need time on, on the backend to assimilate it.
[01:03:14] Matt DesRoches: Yes. So much. So much so I couldn't, it's so funny when you're talking about that and it's yeah, years later you'll literally be like, oh, that's what that meant to me. Yeah. I ju I couldn't figure it out for them.
Like I knew it was there somewhere, but that's what that means. This is where it is implemented, this is how it's, and then even then it still takes time to integrate it and in implement it after that. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, yeah, it's a super important thing, especially for athletes too.
It's I don't think athletes realize like how important it is to rest their mind. Oh yeah. If you're, I think a lot of athletes don't understand actually how much stress they're putting on their mind and their body. Until they actually chill out something, they're like, oh, that's what stress feels like.
Cuz they see the other side of it and they're like, oh, okay. I was like redlining there and I had no idea. So yeah, I think it's important to find that base floor and get familiar with that and try to check back with that base floor as, as much as you can. Cuz as much as you can as for most people, it's gonna.
Like still not that much. So yeah.
[01:04:15] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think most people realize how like the elites of the elite are neurotic, crazy people. Yes. And they probably need to be to get yes to that level so it becomes a consult. Consult. A couple weeks ago with an f l top quarterback who got knocked out, had a concussion.
Yeah. So good buddy of his is the neurologist. He calls me for nutrition stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And it's just, you're just, I'm just laughing because I know the person and I know what to what degree this person wants answers Yes. Into what degree of how neurotic they are. So you even have to be careful what you even suggest because they'll take it and do 10 of it.
So you, yeah. And it, like you were saying, like the end of the season just go decompress man. Like you had a season. Like just trying to get them some space on the back end, but you can't really take away or change their personality either, because that's also what drove them to be so good at what they actually are doing and get rewarded and get paid big money for.
Yeah. So I always just find it, it's just such a weird paradox of almost everyone is wired that way at like the highest level or to some degree, That comes with such a cost too, that if they're not careful, it just burns 'em out and actually leads to negative performance then too.
[01:05:41] Matt DesRoches: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
I see. See it all the time. Like with fighting, that was a big thing is like fighting ages people probably more than any other sport I've seen. Probably football. Football's probably up there too. Yeah, ex especially if you look at the life exp expectancy for football, but like with fighting, you sit with this thing in the back of your head that someone has signed a contract and he's literally training every day to smash a shin into your skull.
Oh yeah. For whatever it is. And you just sit that and that lives in the back of your head for months and then that's done and you sign a contract pretty much right away again. And then that just sits there for months. And a lot of fighters don't realize how much stress they actually carry. I'm like, just sit down and think about it cuz that thing is just sitting at the back of your head nodding at you all day long.
You know what I mean? Imagine if you told, if you told someone like someone's gonna walk into the door in six months time and they're gonna pull a gun on you. That's the same thing with fighting cuz when you fight it's it literally feels and I've done crazy stuff out there.
Whatever you want to, like climbing, Scott, all those things, it's like fight. There's nothing that puts the amount of pressure I've felt as walking out to an arena and stepping in the cage as a fight. And it's that's a massive stressor. And your body is going to sit with that and knowing that it's gonna have to endure that in whatever, how many months time.
And it's like you just have to take inventory. I think like the more time you spent taking inventory of certain things, that's how you make changes. Just like we were talking about training earlier, taking inventory, observing and actually what is going on here? Just, observing the simple process of observing.
That's how, my, my family are fishermen and I realize one thing about people that are like laborers, whether it's farmers, fishermen is one thing, is they get people that are good at those things, one thing they're really good at is observing, like . Whether it's weather patterns, whether it's, pressure systems, whether it's, anything, psychology, the animals and certain behaviors that they have and those things changing.
Those people that get good at those things, they're really good at observing. And I took a lot from that, seeing how, like I would never think of that in a million years. If you observe this the way that this person did, you probably might come to it. But, so I just realized like always checking in myself like, what am I actually seeing here?
Take inventory. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:07:59] Dr Mike T Nelson: No, that's good. That's super useful. And even to me it's fascinating on what is based on. Your perceptions, right? Because people assume that everybody sees the same thing. So yeah, you may have the same visual input that comes from the back of your eye into the back of your brain, but it doesn't mean it's processed the same way.
Yeah. So have you've ever seen the online thing called I think it's called an awareness test, where they're passing the basketball back and forth? I've talking about it on the podcast before. But look it up. Yeah. And yeah, I'll just leave it at that. So look up awareness test and there's people passing the basketball back and forth, but Yeah.
Even coaching people like, so newer coaches, I'll be like, okay, here's a video. What do you see? I don't know. Looks fine. Squat looks good. Okay. You don't see anything weird? No, it looks good. Okay. Look at his knees. What do you see there? Oh, his left knees coming in. And it's so funny because you're not the skillset to see specific things and you can show someone else the same video.
They're watching the same video, but if they don't have any experience with that, yeah. They literally, it doesn't register like they see it, but there's no, no point. So it just, in one, you're out the other year, which is amazing. Like you watch high level I've seen video and interviews of, Charlie Francis, high level den path, spring coaches, and they're like, not even watching the damn runner.
They're like, yeah, he's slow today. Like, how the fuck do you know? He's slow. He's yeah. His foot pattern's way off. Yeah. , look at the guy in the timer. You're like, son, him a bitch. He's right. He wasn't even watching him. . Yeah.
[01:09:33] Matt DesRoches: Just genius geniuses, eh, like their ability to ah, just, especially with sprinting and stuff like that, just makes no sense to me.
[01:09:39] Dr Mike T Nelson: No, it makes, I'm watching this going, this guy is an idiot. And then I'm like, this guy's a fucking genius. . Yes.
[01:09:45] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. Yeah. Those two names too yeah. Damn. Faff is super interesting guy.
[01:09:50] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I've never met him in person, but I know many people have and have been coached by him and hung out with him and they all say nice things.
[01:09:56] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. I listened to his story and hear him talk bit like, he is big into patterns. , hey, like fractal patterns and all these different things. Yeah. Like just such a super interesting guy. Yeah, I heard him talk a little bit about his life and that's his thing, right? It's just like paying attention,
[01:10:09] Dr Mike T Nelson: and you'll get there. Yeah. Yeah. Look at how, I think of Charlie Francis, like all the stuff he said when I was growing up. I remember reading God, was it Speed Trap? I think I got as a used e legal ebook copy somewhere, . And the first time I read it, I was equally amazed at the information and also who is this weirdo?
Like it, it. Fit in my little strength and conditioning, like standard three by 10 box. And then, later you figure out who he is and you're like, huh. It's hard to dismiss those results as this guy is just some crazy whackadoo, cuz it seems to be working . Yeah.
[01:10:45] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. No, I think yeah, a lot of those people I think that's what a lot of people miss on, on what those guys like, how the how those guys got there.
And one thing that I love that you say, oh, it's probably one of my fav violent consistency. Yes. I love that. Yes. I like, I literally that's one of the best phrases ever. Because, it's so applicable to so many things. It's just being consistent with things. And that's where the result, , just, you pick anything, whether it's nutrition, whether it's, your social life, whether it's, exercise is just finding consistency.
Like it doesn't have to be every day, it doesn't have to be every two hours. It just has to be consistent. If you can make more things consistent than having the best plan or having the best thing or having the dude. And it's funny because people hear the word consistency and they just their eyes just like their brain just turns off.
Yeah. And don't, they don't process it. And that's the thing, it's like when I was younger and I would hear people say things like, I'll never. I'll never forget it. When I walked into the gym the first day when I was like nine years old, the guy that ran the gym he's still to this day, he was like breaking into the Porsche up record.
He's just a great guy. just, I don't know, he's probably like 70, probably 80. He was like, yeah you come here few years, get to know things, by the time you're 20 you'll probably be in decent shape. And I'm like, dude, I'll be in good shape in a year, like
You know what I mean? And it was so true though. It was funny because the first time I ever actually felt like I was in good shape in my life was when I was like 20, 21. Cuz it took me so long to put all the pieces together, even though I had the consistency part, but I didn't have the consistency part in all the right ways.
And it takes time to learn that is being consistent with all the different practices within fitness and health and all those things. And it takes time. It's not gonna happen in a year. It's not gonna happen in a night. It's yeah.
[01:12:31] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I get sometimes interesting emails that people are like why does consistency have to be violent?
Why did you bring violence into it? ? And I'm like, one, it is like you said, because you just said, bro, be more consistent. They're like, they didn't even hear anything you said. Exactly. So if you hear like violent consistency, like what is it that's, at least it gets their attention.
Yes. There is some aspect to it that it can be hard and it's difficult and it's not easy to do day in and day out right there. Like you realize Stephen Pressfield's stuff, who I love, he is there's some resistance that's coming after you for whatever it is you wanna do. You wanna be a writer, you wanna be a professional athlete, you wanna be good.
Whatever it is, doesn't matter. There's something out there that is literally trying to stop you from doing what you're doing. And the first time I heard that, I was like, this is, I don't know about this. But then the more I was like, I get it. That makes sense. , and that it, it does take effort day in and day out.
Even, for weirdos like us who love exercise and it's what we do, it's, yeah, there's always even today, my session was supposed to be an hour and a half. I had another meeting I forgot about, didn't know. . So then it got cut down, meeting goes over by a little bit. Time I change and I just have to walk into my garage.
It went to 24 minute session, right? . But I still got something in which was something better than nothing. Was it optimal? No, it wasn't close to optimal, but it's again, better than nothing. So even I think at like when I was younger, I always thought I would get to a point where everything would just be easy.
It's easier, but I don't think it ever gets to the point where it's like easy all the time. That's just, this is not.
[01:14:07] Matt DesRoches: Yeah, that's the thing. It's if it's easy, is it like, is it really a stressor? You know what I mean? it providing what I'm looking for? Yeah. It's, and that's the thing is yeah that 10 k run at whatever it is, 10 minute per mile pace might be easy someday, but doesn't mean it's gonna be what you need to get to the next level.
I'm not saying that, running at that pace, it's always healthy. It's always healthy, we know that. But maybe not if you, if you're new, but yeah. So I, it's it's it does everything just, it's hard takes maturity to learn that, you have to let things sink in.
You have to let your mistakes happen. You have to run into the wall a few times because if you're not that's something I took from Bill Hartman. It was just like, whatever I say to you, it's irrelevant. Basically he's just you have to slam your head into the brick wall.
Like you have to go make the mistakes. I could give you the best thing, I can give you the best path, and it means nothing to you. Cause y you don't have my life, you don't have my experiences, you don't have the knowledge base and the certain things that I have, you have a different knowledge base set.
It's it means nothing. You still have to go out there and fall flat in your face regardless. And I always, I would always try to approach that. I would spend so much time trying to research things before I would do them. . So I'm like, I just want the most efficient path to getting there.
And it's yep, you do. I think that's important. I think it's great to like have a base of knowledge before you engage in something, especially if it's dangerous or it holds risk. But like it just coming to terms that like, hey dude, you're still gonna have to fall flat in your face. There's no avoiding it.
Just absorb it and go
[01:15:32] Dr Mike T Nelson: forward. Yeah, man. As similar do I do now, it's taken me years to get here. Is that the first question I'll ask is what's the downside? What are the risks? ? Like I don't even ask what are the benefits, right? Because if there's zero risk or very low risk or the risk can be mitigated, then great, I'll take steps to mitigate the risk and hey, even if the upside's not known, I'm not gonna injure myself.
Or at least I know what I'm risking in term terms of that. Yeah. And then viewing what you do and what you research and what you inform as they're related, but they can actually be too separate paths. So I think it's too easy to get stuck down, like we talked about the experience only or the research only, and you're just gonna figure things out as you're doing it.
Like you said, you're gonna screw stuff up. You're gonna I have on my list of fiberglass a surfboard or a foil board, and I already know that no matter how many YouTube videos I watch and how many people I can consult with and walk me through, I'm gonna screw the first one up like I just am because I've never done it before.
It's probably gonna look fu ugly. My whole goal is that if I could ever ride it, that would be a pearl. But I'm already assuming I'm just gonna have to ship, can the board, the everything that I put into it, but I'm not gonna get a better version without doing that. So I think the older I get, the more I just, I don't really assume failure, but just I'm more used to the cost that's gonna be involved and that is gonna be part of the process.
But I'll learn a whole bunch of stuff. I'll learn what not to do. And like you said, the reality is I could probably have eight people tell me not to do that, and I'd probably still screw up and do it, but I probably remember the time that I screwed it up too. Yeah. And so I, I think back to especially coaching younger guys to rip on guys, , you can be like, Hey man, you know this program, that's a really bad idea.
I don't think you should be doing that. And then I usually look at you and you're like I don't know. I don't know if I wanna trust you. I'm like, okay. And they make their own mistakes. And so now I'm like, I don't think I can ever convince them not to make any mistakes. And they're going to make mistakes.
The analogy I use with them is okay, here's your car. You're gonna put the car in the ditch at some point. No matter what I tell you, just don't go off the cliff. Just don't do any horrific damage. And can we get you to go in the ditch and learn your lesson and then, get back on the road again?
Because it's not fair of me to assume that I can give you the best directions to keep you on the road a hundred percent of the time. This is, I don't think that's realistic.
[01:17:54] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. There has to be resistance there for your brain to actually learn, yes. There has to be resistance there.
Cuz there has to be some type of stimulation going on, if there's no risk, it's very, and I noticed that myself, like I will tend to place things to be more difficult just to force me to try and find some stimulation and whatever, like putting a deadline on something or whatever.
Not that, that's always the best way to do things, depending on what you're doing, but providing a little bit of risk involved with whatever you're doing. Or I'm gonna hit, you know this, but on the second set I'm gonna hit this. It's more, more the second set I'm looking for and whatever it is just to spice things up cuz that's, your brain loves that novelty, that challenge.
Just understanding that resistance is the path. That's what you have to be signing up for a little bit.
[01:18:43] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. The other analogy I use with people is things that you learn really fast tend to get boring. Yeah. It's if you. If you so I compare to, trying to learn how to foil board or kiteboard or surf versus riding on a jet ski.
And I have a jet ski. They're great. Yeah. Yeah. They're fun. Yeah. But yeah, after a while it's still fun, but it's not like surfing kiteboarding foil boarding, but the amount of effort and time I spent to learn how to kiteboard, it's crazy. But I think it is more appealing because it is difficult. Like you have more inputs into the system, or people who surf, how long they spend, trying to read waves and get the right wave and all that kind of stuff.
I think there is something where you have to put time and effort in to learning it. Otherwise you just don't ever really appreciate it either. Yeah. It's not just the outcome. Yeah.
[01:19:38] Matt DesRoches: That, that spans across so many things that
[01:19:41] Dr Mike T Nelson: cry.
[01:19:41] Matt DesRoches: Everything. Yes. Oh yeah. Dieting, all these different things. It's I've been on those trains, like after a bad weight cut, you're just eating crap every day.
It doesn't taste good. It doesn't, nothing tastes good. And there's a point where you get no satisfaction from what you're putting in your mouth. You're just putting in your mouth just because, and then you know, you go back to oh, this is a treat. This is awesome. This is super enjoyable. It's
[01:20:04] Dr Mike T Nelson: crazy.
Oh, was it? Oh, it was a plain potato. Oh my god. . Yeah, the carbohydrate. Oh, . .
[01:20:12] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's so true. Yeah. So I think it just, a lot of these things take time and just understanding that maturity takes time. We all think we're mature at 19, we all think we're mature at 27. We all think we're mature.
But yeah, it's a process
[01:20:27] Dr Mike T Nelson: like forever. Yeah. I feel, God, I'm like closer to 50 now. I'm 48. I don't feel like I'm 48, am I gonna get to 60 and 70 and still feel like maybe I'm a little more, more achy now, but it's like my brain has a hard time comprehending that I'm the age that I'm at.
Yeah. But you see some other people that are like half my age, and you're like, you act like you're a senior citizen . And it's back to what, we talked about before, like everything's a little bit too routine. They don't do much play, they don't do a lot of recreation. They just, I don't know, sometimes seem a little bit lost, probably don't have much purpose, yeah. So I think there is a lot to all those things.
[01:21:08] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. Yeah. Society does like to press that on it. It's oh, you're too old to do this. You're old, you're, oh, it's time to settle down now. Like all these little things that just trickle into the subconscious and just oh, I'm too old to be doing this stuff.
What am I doing? Or they get injured doing something. You're like, oh I'm too old to be doing these things. I'm getting injured. I can't take time off. It cost me a workday or this and that. And it's yeah. I see. But that's just part of the process, and I think a lot of people age rather quickly, not necessarily because, they're genetics or whatever, and it's just kind of those things trickling into the subconscious and pulling that step back.
Cause they just think life should just be getting easier as you get older. , and they're just like, oh, I don't have to spend the amount of people, like I'll talk to like, when was the last time like, you actually tried to solve a math problem , or just tried to add 'em, subtract without going to your calculator, like you can do it. , and yes, your calculator to be quicker, but like how many times do you exercise your brain like that? And we are all just oh, we are too old to do that stuff. I'm too old to put any men mental energy into this thing or that thing.
And it's yeah, those things are important if you want to be able to like, do stuff , oh yeah. Whenever you get older. It's just, I think our society, it's, it, a lot of it's just steered so much towards. Efficiency and, convenience and all these things.
It's like efficiency's good, but sometimes just taking the long road is, it's gonna serve you better.
[01:22:22] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. I do find it fascinating how as modern life has gotten easier, it's actually been worse for our physiology. So it's crazy. It's like the world's biggest inverse .
[01:22:37] Matt DesRoches: It's so crazy. It's just, and how much time do you spend barefoot outside with your feet in the grass or whatever.
Yeah. Not that, I'm saying like it's gonna, cure cancer or anything, but it's just just living as a human would live. How far we've gone from that. It's just, do you ever go wash the sunset? Do you ever go outside and whatever, just it's, everything is, and this is something that always gets brought up at, been talking to one of everybody's that I work with and everything.
Why is everyone so busy? Yeah. It's the information, it's it's stealing it's pr, it people think, A lot of people think they're busy too. A lot of people aren't actually busy, but they think they're busy and they feel like they're busy. And it, and in turn makes 'em feel like, oh, I'm too busy to do these things.
But if you look at their screen time or social media time or all these different things, it's. I don't know if you're that busy. Yeah. , you might feel busy because you never let your brain rest or you don't, do things that we were normally meant to do and have those resets like we would normally have, like when you work, you take a break for 10 minutes, you just sit there and drink a glass of water, you stare at whatever the cow that's walking by and ah, that's so dressing.
You got a limp today, or whatever it is, , or you're raking the yard and you're watching, some crazy cat on the street trying to find a mouse, whatever it is. Just realizing it's crazy because like when I was younger, people would just stop in the house and come chat, just have a brief chat and maybe have a coffee or a tea.
I can't remember. I've had no one just stop by my house ever since I've lived here. That does not happen. And people almost feel like intruded on Yeah. Yeah. And this is more of a small town thing, right? This, you're not probably doing this in New York City, but yeah, it's just, it's that's gone, that's sailed.
People don't do that anymore. You'd be crazy if you just knocked on someone door and knocked on someone's door and said, Hey, what's going on? How are you? I haven't seen you in a while, , let's go, grab a bite to eat or have a coffee or let, no one has time for that. It feels and it's not like anyone works any crazier hours than they did before.
It's just that we tend to fill up all those little microseconds of space, which is whatever. We're always trying to put something in our face. Yeah, I don't know. Do
[01:24:46] Dr Mike T Nelson: you think that's just the need to be distracted so you're not left with your own brain? I know for myself that was like a hundred percent part of my issue and probably still is that Yeah.
Even for years, starting maybe four years ago, I did a thing where people asked me how I was doing. I could not say, oh, I'm good, but busy, because that was like my routine answer to everybody , which is just a worthless answer anyway. Yeah. It's not descriptive. It's eh, everyone's busy and it's was I busy?
Maybe. But yeah, I just don't think it was helpful to be telling my nervous system. I was busy all the time. I don't think it was productive, but it just seems like the brain left to its own, wants to be distracted. And I wonder how much of that is when we talked about just lack of novel inputs, like it is your body's way of trying to find stimulus and we've gotten really good at figuring out what thing to show you on Facebook to hijack your own nervous system against yourself, right?
Yeah. So you default to looking for something else and it's just so happens now. It's social media or whatever it is,
[01:25:55] Matt DesRoches: yeah. Oh yeah. I, and it's funny cuz I got, I now, cuz one of the business I run, I had to get a smartphone again. Just, it would be impossible to do without it. But before I had a flip phone for several years and I didn't have social media.
Oh, nice. and I went I had to get social media for something I did back in the day. I signed a contract, so I had to do social media for a bit, but I had no social media before that and I got off it again after for a long time. And the one thing you realized, like when you have a flip phone, you do not wanna text anyone, right?
T nine takes 15 minutes to say, yeah, I'll be there, or whatever it is. So you just you call people at super efficient, but you realize how much of your life is like, revolved. Like when I got the smartphone back, I just realized like how much more stress and how much, just instantly, how much more connected I was all the time.
And my brain, like pretty much after a week, my brain was already starting to go back on that overdrive. And I know it's necessary for a lot of us, but it was just a really cool observation where I realized like how addicted people were. Like I would always see just ticks. I would watch people like in waiting rooms, right?
You just watch 'em? Yeah. Yeah. Just grab everyone's on their phone. But if they're not, or they're doing something, they're like, just grab their pocket. Or the second the receptionist would stop talking to them, they'd just grab their phone. Then, like it's. I don't honestly think the brain was ever developed to do that.
Like cuz there's just so much information like you and it's a different type of information. It's not like the passive observing, it's like the interactive, engaging, trying to grab your attention, trying to hijack you, like you said. Trying to hijack their, and those social engineers, they know what they're doing.
They don't make, 500 grand there for . Yeah. It's not like those, it's same with food scientists. Yeah. Like those guys they make good money for a reason cuz they're good at what they do and it works. If it didn't work, they wouldn't get paid good money. Yeah. Cause those businesses wouldn't pay them anything.
Yeah. They're ruthless, yeah. I think when you start to see it that way, you're just like, oh yeah, maybe I could chuck this thing away for a bit or whatever and just, and just try and find some more of that space that just natural space that I think is not there anymore.
But
[01:28:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah. And it sound like too old people here, but it seems to me like it's getting, yeah. Worse, not better. But I also know if you look at history, they said the same thing about radio. They said the same thing about tv. They said the same thing about smartphones. Now it's social media, so I know it's humans are more resilient than that and it will probably.
Figure out a way to, to get through it. But yeah, it does seem crazy to me. I saw a lady today walking her dog who looked sad cuz he didn't know what the owner was doing and it's 22 degrees out, which is not super cold. And she's on her phone walking her dog outside on the street. I'm thinking, what are you doing?
Plus it's cold. Like I, you, I, and it wasn't like just to text someone, she going down the road, do looking at whatever, and I'm, yeah, I don't know. And I know like I, after I do a launch sometimes with the flex side, the FIS flexer, I haven't done it this launch that well, but I usually try to put more posts out on social media, try to make sure I answer dms, all that stuff.
Yeah. And after a week of doing that, like I feel like on that Monday and Tuesday, like I had squirrel brain. I feel like I'm like, because you, yeah. I feel like during that week, I feel like it's my obligation to get back to people sooner than later. Or a lot of times, especially lately, it's man, if I don't have time to get to your dm, like if you're somebody I know, I'll try to tell you when I'll get back to you.
Yeah. But if you're some rando I've never met, like I don't really feel like I need to get back to you right away. You know what I mean? Yes. But it's so easy when that phone is in your pocket to feel like, oh, I could be productive during this five minute or two minute piece of time. Yes. But I.
I was actually being more non-productive. So four and a half years ago I took email off my phone. I took, I used True Coach as a platform. I took that off my phone. So clients really need to meet, reach me. Some of 'em actually have my text, my private cell phone, they can text me. But other than that, like unless in front of my computer, I can't do a lot of stuff.
If the internet imploded, my computer went up in flames, I could probably figure out a way to, get mail on my phone and figure it out. But it would take a lot of work on purpose. Yeah. Yeah. Because I found when it was on there, I would check email and I'd come back to, and I'd pull up on my PC and I was rereading the same damn emails like three times.
Again, I didn't do anything with it. All to do was just distract myself and think that I was doing work where if I measured by what actually got done, like I wasn't getting more stuff done. Yeah. I felt like it was, but I wasn't.
[01:30:34] Matt DesRoches: Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to take that in. Like it's hard to realize those things.
Cuz a and that's the thing, it's like a lot of people just aren't gonna tell you that either, and we're not gonna naturally want to incline to try and figure that out ourselves. So it's hard to find. That was like when I had my. Like that child forced me and I heard this a few athletes say this is I never became a good athlete until I had my first child.
And I and for some people it's the opposite. It's , was a great athlete until I had my first child. , there's, it's a polar spectrum there. But because some people, they're just like, okay, if I even want to train, I have to take massive inventory. like precisely trying places whenever I can.
And even if I can't get it in, I'm gonna find a time to do it somewhere. And find that consistency. And like now when they step in the gym and they have 15 minutes to work, that 15 minutes is gonna be a good 15 minutes. Oh yeah. It might not be the best cuz of whatever sleep or whatever, but they're gonna do their best to be in focus, in tune what they're doing to make the best out of what they have.
And I think, that was a big thing for me. It was like whenever I had a kid, time went from this massive ocean. It's it's endless , it's like dimensions. There's so many dimensions. And it went to this linear thing where it's yeah, most of it is actually taken away now.
And you have to try and sort out how are you gonna make time? And then how are you gonna take advantage of that time that you do make. But yeah, and it doesn't, like if I wouldn't have had that, I wouldn't have been, as productive in a lot of ways. But you know it, and a lot of times it takes someone saying something maybe a certain way or something happening for that to come to mind.
[01:32:07] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I don't, I think physiology and just systems in general have to have constraints. Yeah. And when you've got open-ended stuff, like a lot of times it's not the best. Yeah. Having a few deadlines are probably good. Like having some constraints on your time to make you reprioritize or are good.
So like when I dealt with the flexi absurd, the first thing I did is I put constraints on it of, okay, it has to be my technical lectures for each thing have to be under one hour because no one's gonna watch an eight hour lecture about protein. They would go pay colleges to do that. Like they're paying me to distill it into one hour of stuff.
That's absolutely useful. Yeah. That sucked. Like the carbohydrate one, I could only get it to an hour and 15 minutes and I think I did it five times or something, but I knew that the product at the end would be more useful because of the constraint. So I think trying to think about those, like with clients, I'm sure you did something similar.
Like one of the big questions I asked him is what's your schedule like, especially if you're new to training, what time are you gonna train? And some people it's like, Getting them on the phone, like literally walking them through every 15 minutes of their day to, to figure it out. But once you do that, a lot of times those people are the people that do the best and are actually paradoxically the most compliant at the same time too.
Yeah.
[01:33:23] Matt DesRoches: They want to be there. Yeah, they wanna be there. That's the big thing. It's that's the biggest thing with anything. It's like, how bad do you really want to do this ? You know what I mean? And if there's more constraints and you're still doing it, yeah, you probably want it pretty bad.
So the chances of being consistent, it's yeah, you might have more obstacles than the next guy you'll have more motivation to do it. And that's gonna be the, and even motivation, right? Even if you don't have the motivation, it's still, it's like you're making the best of what you have.
[01:33:50] Dr Mike T Nelson: But yeah. Yeah. Look at mma like, that like with some of the top fighters who have just crazy backs, stories of how they even ended up doing it. You're like, what the hell? Yes. Oh
[01:34:01] Matt DesRoches: yeah. It's crazy. It's such a weird sport. You find the most random people from walks of life.
When you walk into a big gym, like whether it's Tristar or you go down to, p top team or wherever, like Tiger Mo, some of these big places you're gonna run into some like really strange, eclectic, interesting characters of what you did. What you were a I don't even understand how you got here.
What do you mean ? But yeah, and those people, a lot of, some of them have different paths, but it's so interesting and th that's the one thing about MMAs is there's so many constraints on your time of , you have to be this and this. To get into UFC now, like back when I was first fighting you had to be like a, maybe let's just say a good high school athlete and had a half decent brain on your head to try and pick apart.
Like what is strategy, what is technique? Now it's in my mind it's right up there with I remember some of these guys that like I was training with and they were Gods in the gym and they're like getting cut in the U F C in two fights and it's yeah, these guys were like some of the best guys they've ever seen in the world at everything.
And they go have two fights and they get, or five fights and they get cut and it's it's so cutthroat. And to manage your time well, it's just, it's crazy looking at a fight camp cuz I work with quite a bit of fighters now again. And it's just insane the amount of things like, the way cut is just a huge factor in itself.
It's almost like doing a body building show in, its in itself. And then you add on okay, you add on all the different things, the physio whatever you're doing for tissue work. You add on, all jiujitsu, boxing, kickboxing, wrestling you add in your S N C, it's like you have to want to be there to do it kind of thing.
And it's like you don't have to getting those guys to be, it's always pulling the leash back with those guys, oh yeah. It's always, it's never, it's never happened to motivate, it motivation enough as when someone's training to fight you, it doesn't take much to get you outta bed in the morning.
But
[01:36:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: I do find as we wrap up here, that, so my buddy Andy Galpin has worked with a lot of top fighters and so he was brought in the past and he just still does some of this now to be like, okay, you're the guy who knows enough to oversee everything. , right? So you, yeah. You're not technique coach.
You're not necessarily the main strength and conditioning coach, but you're the person who's in charge at a systems level to make sure all these little pieces go together. So that we win, which I thought was an ingenious thing because the little bit, I've worked with some other higher level athletes.
The thing that I just have zero patience for anymore is the bickering between this coach and that coach. And they didn't get enough time and that's why they lost. And yeah, they're. They have the best intentions, but it's like everyone thinks they're hammer, they need the nail. Like it's Yes. Or it was someone else who completely dropped the ball and, but there was no one in charge who made the decision.
Like in the N F L N H L, you have a head coach who says, okay, I'm the top decision maker. Yes. I have all these assistant coaches, I have all these teams that help, but at the end of the day, win or lose, it's my responsibility. Or sometimes in like high level athletes, especially single person stuff like m A, it was more like a free for all of all these specialists who were brought in.
But there's 800 cooks in the kitchen and it was just a disaster.
[01:37:21] Matt DesRoches: so many directions. There's too many directions. Everyone's getting pulled everywhere,
[01:37:25] Dr Mike T Nelson: right? Few, there's a few. And the athlete gets screwed in the end. And the athlete's putting in more effort than they should be putting in
[01:37:30] Matt DesRoches: Big time.
Because they're going, this coach is telling them like, it's all about your jiu-jitsu, like , all those other coaches, they're just like, they don't know, they don't understand it. Like rule more. Like it's just, yeah, no it's hard. I f I feel for those guys and that's the role I take now is it's more kind of like global view.
Okay, what are you doing for your S N C? What are you doing for your physiology there? What are you doing for, strike, we're gonna go look high level striking. Like it's more about. High level stuff and then whittle down on the little aspects throughout your camp, but you have to have a clear path.
What is your game plan? Yeah. And a lot of fighters don't actually have a game plan, be the best, bro. . Exactly right. Just I'll go figure it out when I get in there. Yeah. Oh yeah, it doesn't work. Scares
[01:38:14] Dr Mike T Nelson: the shit
[01:38:14] Matt DesRoches: outta me. Doesn't work at this stage,
[01:38:16] Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah. How do you circumvent that?
Do you have a certain agreement ahead of time that says, hey I'm in charge of this, or this is my role or how do you try to set that up ahead of time,
[01:38:26] Matt DesRoches: with a lot of the fighters that work with around here I have a good reputation cause I fought for a long time and I also taught in a different way than a lot of people taught.
So they, if someone's coming to me, I like, I know they're coming to me because I'm, I have something different. So with m A, it's not, it's, I don't really have a lot of that friction where I would have with another sport where it's it's like, why am I trusting you? Kind of thing. Yeah. With, yeah. So with M A, it's like they, they they see and they they come to the table with a lot of trust. So that's the easy thing with that is it's very easy to game plan with that. It's very easy to dial in nutrition. It's very easy to dial in technique and strategy and all these different things.
And the cerebral aspects of the game and the psychology of the game. What are you doing for your psyche? You know what I mean? What are you doing? You're gonna go in there and it's like a traumatic event and you're gonna have to be able to deal with that . So what are you doing to prepare for that?
So yeah. And when people, when other people see that around you and they see like someone working with you and they see competence or whatever they'll be, they know, right? Like when you'll know when you walk into a gym, if a cow's there, like you see competence when you see it like Dave Faff or whatever.
I'm not comparing my guy, I'm not comparing myself to those guys at all. But I'm just saying if you have a little bit of confidence competence, people can see that and they generally will give you trust when they see that, right? But yeah.
[01:39:44] Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Last question. For someone who's just trying to get better performance, it could be endurance performance, could be getting stronger, adding muscle, whatever, what would be like your three tips that you would give them based on all your knowledge and experience?
And it's a general question on purpose.
[01:40:01] Matt DesRoches: One thing have a session every day. Like for general performance, for people that like, just regular person, maybe they play rec sports or whatever. If you're doing something every day, that's a good place to. and even it's a good place to be at years down the road because if you're doing something every day, you're probably not destroying yourself.
, I'm not saying there's never a time to destroy yourself, but those things happen and you'll take those days off anyways. , you'll know when you wake up. But if you can do something every day, there's no reason why you can't do zone two work. Yeah.
After doing a crazy hard session or zone one work. I'm a big fan of zone one work. People like miss old zone one thing. Like you don't always have to be at the edge of zone two, just go as well. Zone one be just like walking, right? Yeah. Walking. Even a slight jog for like better athletes. And it's what is the difference between zone two and zone one benefits?
You know what I mean? We actually don't know. Yeah. But we know that there is a benefit from zone one. We know there is. And it just causes a little bit less damage. It causes a little bit, especially for running and things like that where you're having impact. So one thing, I'm being honest, just having that, like filing consistency right, is like doing something every day.
And if you're doing something every day, it makes it harder to stray. If you have two days scheduled in, coming back on that day, it's like you might be like super good to get after it, but you also might be like falling into that lack of comfort. Like that resistance now becomes really high and further to reach.
But if you do something every day that becomes like part of a routine in a way, it might not be the same thing. It might be novel. Maybe you go and do a, an easy CrossFit wad. Maybe you go out and do vo two max intervals on the rower. Maybe you don't do 20 minutes, maybe you just do a little bit of yo to max work, right?
. But just having that something in there every day. And then the other thing is really focus on and on getting yourself back down. So this was one thing that I started doing a long time ago, is meditating in between sets. , I'm not saying you had to meditate in between sets, but I found my performance and all my workouts and whatever I was doing, whether it's intervals go, in a completely different direction.
Like it was a, it's just a completely different workout and I found my ability to recover over the long run was much better. , I felt like I was taking on less stress. I would wake up the next day feeling better. I would even end the workout feeling much better. And I would always end the workout with some time of bringing that, that nervous system back down.
Because a lot of people, they go workout, they rush again in the shower, they rush again in the car and back to wherever. It's just cut your workout back 10 minutes or five minutes or two minutes. After the shower or whenever just sit there and it doesn't have to be meditation, it doesn't have to be anything.
Just turn your brain off for two minutes. And I think people would be really surprised to see the difference in recovery. Because you get sucked back into that life and now you're not recovering cuz you're right back into where you started. So yeah. And then the last thing would just be patient and don't look for results.
If you're there to look for results, look for the journey and just understand that the journey's gonna provide your result. Just look to have a good journey. Like when you go on a climbing trip, like you're not like thinking about, oh, I want to like, send all the, it's like you're just excited to go climb.
, same with Kit Bar. It's like you want to, yeah. It's not yeah, you want to land some tricks or whatever, but it should be about doing what you're doing. You should just be enjoying the process and having patience with what you're doing and that helps you be a little bit more present.
And I think, and that just spills over. I know this is all but I think those are actionable processes is how you view things, really does change a lot of things. It has for me anyways. And just forcing those perspectives more and more. So yeah. Have those, daily.
Whatever they're gonna be for physical activity could be rake in the yard. Shutting the nervous system down after high intensity bouts or any type of like hard physical labor. That's a huge thing for me. And then finding patience and finding that consistency in letting things happen.
Yeah.
[01:44:03] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. No, that's great. Like I, so I set my schedule up on Mondays. I can go to the local gym here and I have a set up where I can train as long as I want. So that's my open ended day where I have the luxury of when I'm not doing any more quality work. Could I still train you when you just, your rep count is off, your brain is trying to, squirrel brain is going somewhere else.
When it's just time to just shut it down, right? Yeah. You're just going through the motions. And the exact same thing you found I found too, is those people are my top end sets. I'm trying to, get the activation energy up and then back down as soon as I can. I'm just up and down surfing type thing.
And then when I'm done, I'll, go hang out in the steam room or sauna, do some breath work in there, relax, and then I have to walk to the gym and then walk, a mile and a half back home so it doesn't take a fair amount of time. Yeah, it does. But I find that those sessions, even though they're longer, they're a little bit more hypertrophy based, not real strength based.
Like my recovery's fine the next day. Like I even come here and do a normal training session here the next. Yeah. And so then I realized, I'm like, oh, so maybe I should add those principles to the rest of my training days. So try to Yes. Get back to a baseline and on something that's easy, relaxing and then go back into your day.
Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent agree with that because high level athletes who have a long career, you'll notice that they can do that up and down really well. Yeah, a good buddy of mine was saying he is worked a lot of top NHL guys and he is yeah, he is you got these sympathetic monsters who are on all the time.
He is they do good for two, maybe three years and they're done, like their injuries, something happens. He's one of the guys I went over to his place and worked on was top guy in the N H L who could deflect pucks from mid-air into the net , like, how do you even do this? But he was amazing. Like you'd tell him to do a task like boom.
He was right there with you could absolutely do it. We're just doing some body work on him. The guy falls asleep on the table. He was like, oh yeah, I just, I don't anything to do with, I just thought he'd relax. So he was really good at being on when he needed to be and just completely off when he was off.
And, last I heard he was playing for over a decade at a high level. Yeah. Yeah. So I love those tips and especially about the journey and the purpose and everything is super useful. Yeah. Thanks man. Yeah, no, thank you. Awesome. So we're getting people find more about you. I know you've got the podcast and I don't know if you work with anyone online or if you want to be found
[01:46:22] Matt DesRoches: or yeah.
I'm, that business is, it's not, it's not taken a backseat, but it's just, I'm a little bit more precise with, what I'm doing with that and who I'm working with. Sure. But you can find me at resilience hpc.ca. That's my website for that business. I'm on Instagram, have the resilience HPC on Instagram.
And also the podcast, which is Oxidated Potential, me and Phil Paterson. He's a he works for Moxie Monitor and
[01:46:51] Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, I didn't know he worked for Moxie. Yeah. Oh,
[01:46:53] Matt DesRoches: interesting. and he works or he is doing his, he's finishing up his PhD there now. But yeah, and we've been, I've been slack on social media just cuz of this other new business.
So stuff will come back folks. I don't even have time to think my, don't
[01:47:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: worry about it, but I like reading your stuff. I'm not saying not putting out any stuff, but I yeah.
[01:47:10] Matt DesRoches: I get it. I'll be putting in stuff soon. Trust me. Things are slowing down. They're starting to slow down now. I'll be posting some good content.
I got lots of good stuff that's been in my head that I've been looking to get out and yeah, so you can find me at those places.
[01:47:23] Dr Mike T Nelson: Cool. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much. I definitely, people are looking for high level stuff. Definitely listened in the podcast and just, all the stuff you guys both share I think is super cool because it's not the rote run of the mill oh, do three sets of 10 again, we didn't learn anything from Delore in 1948 since then.
Yeah. It's Hey, look at some of these mechanisms. Look at some of this other stuff. So it's yeah. Yeah. It's always super informative and one the rare ones, I actually look on Instagram, so there's a That's awesome. Enough people on social media that make me not want to completely shit can all of it.
[01:47:54] Matt DesRoches: .
Oh man, this has been great, Mike. I like, this is awesome. This is this is a great time for me. I blast. I always loved Oh, good. Talking to you. And again man, I love your stuff. So appreciated that you asked me to come on the podcast. It's a huge honor for me. I really appreciate it. Made my month, probably made my year so nice.
Awesome man. Really appreciate that.
[01:48:13] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. We'll have to have you back on when you're not so busy cutting trees down and training MMA people and yeah, we could actually talk about something technical that we never talked about at all, like zone two training and all the stuff we hinted at that never followed up with us
Yes,
[01:48:26] Matt DesRoches: I know. We'll def we'll get there. Yeah.
[01:48:27] Dr Mike T Nelson: Cool man. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Awesome. Appreciate it, Mike. Awesome. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to the podcast here. Massive things too. Matt over a dock today to potential checkout all of his stuff there. If you enjoy. A deep dive into all aspects. Physiology, highly recommend his podcast. He's got some really good researchers on there and practitioners, coaches. Always just a fantastic, intelligent discussion.
I hope to see you at some of the seminars coming up starting later this month, which is January, 2023. And then through February and the first part of March. If you're at any of those events, please come up and say, hi, would love to meet you there. If you want more information and you can sign up to the newsletter, which is free. Go to miketnelson.com.
There'll be a way to sign up to the newsletter there for free and just hit reply and say, hi. As always, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Any feedback you have, please hit me up. If you can help us out by giving us whatever stars you think is appropriate on the old review. Even leaving a couple sentence review makes a huge difference in terms of distribution of the podcast since.
Right now, this is just all organic and I enjoy. Doing it for fun and want to try to get all of you the best information that I can possibly find from, people you might know. And people you may not know at all. So we've got a lot more guests coming up here in the next few weeks so stay tuned for that thank you so much and we will talk to all of you next week.